ARCHITECT Will Alsop yesterday warned the people of Merseyside to support his controversial Fourth Grace scheme - or risk losing it.

ARCHITECT Will Alsop yesterday warned the people of Merseyside to support his controversial Fourth Grace scheme - or risk losing it.

He also revealed the cost of the iconic waterfront structure has been significantly lowered by #70m. The original estimate for the project was #270m.

Speaking after a Daily Post event yesterday, Mr Alsop said the price tag of the building, (pictured), was overestimated when his entry was originally submitted to the competition, run by Liverpool Vision, and has now been dramatically reduced.

However, he also added a word of caution to those organisations and members of the public who constantly criticise the scheme, staing they may well scupper it completely.

Of the fincancial costs of the project, Mr Alsop said: "When you do the competition you know roughly the costs, but haven't fine tuned it.

"Once you have won you start talking to a variety of people and planners have rules they haven't told you about in the competition and you work from there."

Mr Alsop added: "It has come down from the original #270m to #200m, that often happens.

"When you estimate the costs you have to build in a large margin for error and then, totalling up the costs, they tend to come down."

Mr Alsop's announcment came after he was a guest panellist on the Daily Post and Echo's Question Time event, part of the Business Live conference where he was quizzed on the merits of his building, known as the Cloud.

When asked by an audience member at the event, which was hosted by Peter Sissons, what would be placed within the building once it was completed, he said: "This is something I have observed in Liverpool, everyone asks me the question what's going in the building?"

Mr Alsop argued that it was not up to him to decide what went inside, adding that its commercial viability was also not a matter for him.

He then said: "If you want to shoot yourselves in the foot and stop this building, you're going the right way about it.

I'm free to walk away. But I happen to believe in the building and that it will help Liverpool."

Qualifying what he had said in front of an audience, Mr Alsop later told the Daily Post that he had no intention of leaving the project.

He added: "If the people all said they didn't want the scheme, I would walk away, I would have no choice.

"If I did leave, though, the project would continue because there is sufficient momentum for it to happen with or without me. If that happened I would probably take my name off it."

Mr Alsop also discussed Liverpool's newly-acquired world heritage status and said that it would have no new effect on the Cloud because of on-going discussions with conservation groups like English Heritage.

Construction is scheduled to start in May 2005.

* THE Question Time debate yesterday was part of the Daily Post week of Business related events known as Business Live.

Other events during the day included two sessions by Davide De Maestri, from Liverpool, who spoke to his audience on the subject of brand management.